Modern Lore finds Lage playfully flipping the script he followed on his acclaimed 2016 Mack Avenue debut, Arclight. That album — produced, like Modern Lore, by Lage’s friend and collaborator, the singer-songwriter Jesse Harris — was his first trio set on electric guitar and found Lage inspired by the sounds and the attitude of the freewheeling, pre-bebop jazz era, when, as he puts it, “country music and jazz and swing were in this weird wild-west period.” This time he incorporates the sensibility, if not the outright sound, of early rock and roll, a similarly hybrid form driven by rhythm, personality and a passion for the electric guitar.

Recorded and Mixed to 88kHz, 24-bit WAV PCM. The 8824 WAV files (8824 is our shorthand for 88kHz, 24-bit encoding) are the original digital file generation received from the artist or label. The DSD and FLAC files are considered second generation and made from conversions using our Blue Coast conversion methods. DSF and FLAC will offer the convenience of metadata that the WAV files may not.

After several blindfold tests, it is our opinion that the 8824 WAV files sound the best, followed by DSF and after that the FLAC 8824. The difference is minimal. We suggest you purchase files for your best performing home DAC. The DAC will make more difference than the file type.